An Exegesis of Conformity: Textual Subversion of Subversive Texts
| Autor: | M. C. Steenberg |
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| Rok vydání: | 2007 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Studies in Church History. 43:25-35 |
| ISSN: | 2059-0644 0424-2084 |
| Popis: | ‘We have learned from the Scriptures …’To speak with authority in the early Church was to speak from the Scriptures. While early Christianity may not have been a ‘religion of the book’ in the same way it is today, it was unquestionably a religion of text, and the refrain ‘we have learned from the holy Scriptures’ is a chorus in the early Christian witness. Here stood the authority of divine fulfilment. To confess merely Christ might be to proclaim a man, perhaps a prophet, perhaps a deity; but to confess ‘the scriptural Christ’ was to proclaim the Messiah foretold in divine writ, the revealed Saviour, and to find in that revelation the character and substance of the confession newly made. Nonetheless, while the text of the Old Testament might be of common heritage (though even this faced the challenge of a Marcion, who wished to do away with it), the emerging textual tradition of the Christian era provided a challenge: which text? what scripture? If the Christ of the Church is the ‘Christ of the scriptures’, determining the content of those scriptures – or those texts accorded scriptural authority in their receipt and influence -becomes critical. More than this, subverting the potential influence of texts deemed unsuitable stands as an essential task. To approach the era authentically, scholarly reading of the rise of a New Testament canon in the early Church must be combined with an understanding of the means and methodologies of its necessary correlate, textual exclusion. I shall argue here that this was accomplished through an exegetical method of subversion more intricate and nuanced than is often perceived. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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